How are IWBs revolutionizing your teaching practice?

Thursday, 28 March 2013

How are IWBs revolutionizing your teaching practice?

How has an Interactive Whiteboard Revolutionized your Teaching Practice?

“My students are able to sit to attend to lessons now. In September, they could sit for ten minutes. Now they can sit for thirty minutes.”

-Neil from Calico P.S.

It’s always exciting to hear special education teachers discussing a topic they are passionate about! In a recent session, special education teachers were asked to describe their classroom experiences using their interactive whiteboards. Every single teacher in attendance had only positive comments about using their board and the related peripherals. Each of the teachers discussed how students are now more engaged in the lessons, as the teachers are able to make lessons on the interactive whiteboards more interactive.

When discussing the learner response systems, teachers love that they are able to get instant feedback about what their students understand. Many teachers discussed how they rarely use traditional paper and pencil tests anymore as their students are able to demonstrate their learning through the use of the learner response systems. Some students in Jodi’s class at Weston Memorial Junior Public School love using the response systems so much, that they will ask her:“Can we have a math test today?”just so they can use the clickers!

Hella at Millwood Public School now has her students creating the assessment questions for the learner response system:

“Students now create multiple choice questions [for the class to answer] which become a higher order thinking task, as they don’t want to make the questions too easy.”

It’s wonderful to learn what a profound impact an interactive whiteboard and peripherals can have in a classroom. The interactive whiteboard does not replace us as teachers, but it does inform and strengthen our teaching practice. As teachers, we are able to use these boards to create more engaging, meaningful and interactive lessons for our students.